Look. We get it. No one likes the state of college football scheduling. No one likes defending their team’s practice of playing cupcakes. We’d all love to play Texas one week and then Miami the next (see my promotion / relegation daydream). Great for the fans, etc. etc.

But college football at the highest level is a multi-million dollar industry. No matter how much you stomp your feet and threaten to hold your breath, emotional appeals to shame don’t bring about real changes in that environment. You might get the occasional throwaway “safe” non-conference game, and then it’s right back to the diet of 1-AA teams. No one is going to risk a BCS payout because of – gasp! – shame and scorn in scheduling.

With all that is at stake, you’re going to have to come up with an actual, tangible incentive to reform scheduling. Instead of criticizing teams for “running away from competition and potential losses”, a more rational approach might examine why the current system provides incentives to do just that and disincentives for more aggressive scheduling.

I’ll give a hint. Why was Louisville a darkhorse national contender pick last year? Why is West Virginia a trendy pick this year? It’s not the offensive scheme. The system rewards records first and schedules much, much later. Fix. That. Problem.

Imagine John Elway throwing a punch in his final Super Bowl. Imagine Roger Clemens’ swan song being a pitch at someone’s head in the World Series. Imagine Michael Jordan doing his best Ron Artest impersonation in the NBA Finals. Imagine sprinter Michael Johnson using those golden shoes to trip the guy next to him during the 1996 Olympics 200 meter finals.

If you can imagine all of that, you might understand how Zinedine Zidane decided to exit international soccer: with a vicious head to the chest of Marco Materazzi during the World Cup final in the last game Zidane will ever play for his nation. Provoked or not, part of being the star is being the statesman. This isn’t Zidane’s first explosive outburst in high-profile games. In most any other context he’d have the stigma of a hothead or a sideshow like Dennis Rodman. Instead he’s celebrated, gushed over by the rudimentary ABC broadcasters, and even awarded the Golden Ball award as the tournament’s most outstanding player. Yes, I realize that the media vote on the award before the final, but FIFA needs to step in and strip the award. Zidane deserves a kick in his Golden Balls before he receives that honor. His career was going to be remembered for the 1998 title and the amazing resurgence during this year’s tournament. Had he remained in the game, he certainly would have participated in the penalty kicks and possibly even changed the outcome. Now he’s a punchline and will leave the world stage with as much scorn as admiration.

I’ve played, coached, and refereed soccer. I’ve watched and followed the game for most of my life. The World Cup is supposed to be the world’s greatest sporting event, but nothing has done more to turn me off to the game than the past month. This is the “highest level” of the sport? The great stories like Ghana and the other underdogs or the German youth movement or Zidane’s tournament prior to the final have been overshadowed by dives, questionable refereeing, and prima donna sportsmanship. ABC and ESPN covered the tournament with the grace of Weird Al’s UHF station.

Look at it this way: while Italy celebrates a well-deserved championship, the nation awaits the consequences of a game-fixing scandal which could affect the careers of several participants in the World Cup championship game. Is this really what international soccer is all about?

OK…last soccer post for four years. American sports isn’t without its needless drama. We have owners screwing up NBA Finals, shoddy refs in the Super Bowl, and baseball looking the other way on steroids. Still, as much as I like and will always respect the World Cup as the planet’s biggest sporting stage, I saw nothing over the month that even came close to the Texas-USC Rose Bowl. Less than a month ’til practice starts.

No, not in Stegeman.  Georgia will be the host team for the 1st and 2nd round games at the Gwinnett Arena in 2009.  Gwinnett is a great arena for the women’s game…it has all of the amenities of a modern arena, it’s moderately-sized enough to sell out yet still seat a good number of fans, and there’s plenty of parking.

Georgia is starting to make better and better use of the Gwinnett Arena, and that’s a good thing.  It’s not a matter of Gwinnett vs. Athens as much as it is Gwinnett vs. Atlanta.  The arena and the Sugarloaf area has things that Stegeman and Athens just don’t – hotel space among them.    Georgia’s promotion of the Gwinnett Arena means that UGA is now coordinating events that might have otherwise been hosted in Atlanta by Tech or Georgia State.
There have been gymnastics events there, the men’s basketball team played there last year, and the Lady Dogs play there annually since the Russell Athletic Shootout moved from Philips Arena to Gwinnett.  UGA will also host the 2007 women’s SEC tournament at the Gwinnett Arena.

Georgia’s basketball program is under incredible scrutiny after the wake slimy trail of the Harricks.  They certainly don’t need news like this threatening the program.  While there are a ton of regulations that everyone involved in a program must keep track of, this seems more like a communication and oversight problem with an assistant coach and head coach.  I would expect that staff members in the current climate be overzealous to a fault about decisions involving prospects, players, and benefits.

UGASports.com is killing some time this summer by having folks votes on Georgia’s best player. Of course we know who will win, but the process spawns some other interesting discussions.

Take quarterbacks. Georgia hasn’t really produced a clear “best” quarterback, and not many Bulldog signal-callers have had much pro success. Not many fans were around to see Tarkenton and fewer were there for Rauch and others from that era. Georgia’s offense during the successful Dooley years was based on the run, so you had quarterbacks who could run the option and pass every now and then. Since the McDuffie revolution in 1991, we’ve had a slew of passers come through the program but none has really had much success beyond Georgia. Without some clear stars at quarterback, some of Georgia’s better players don’t get their due sometimes.

Some quarterbacks make it easy. Manning, Leinart, Vick, Frazier, Marino…they all showed obvious talent in college and could be appreciated for their roles on some very good teams. For those with less-obvious talent or in systems that don’t lend themselves to gaudy numbers, it’s very possible to underrate some very good players.

Buck Belue. Critics will be quick to point out that “all he did was hand off to Herschel.” Sure. He also brought Georgia back off the mat down 20-0 to Tech in 1978, and he saved the 1980 season with a scrambling pass against Florida. Quarterbacks like Belue who might have been overshadowed by a superstar tailback or a dominant defense often aren’t appreciated. Even David Greene – no one in Division 1 has had more wins as a starter – gets slighted because as some fans put it, “most of those wins belonged to the defense”. Unbelieveable. It’s possible to give too much credit to the quarterback; football is a team game of course, and rarely can a single player overcome serious deficiencies elsewhere. Still, the quarterback is a focal point in any system, and there are reasons why teams have a bit more success with some quarterbacks than with others.

Jay Barker is probably the poster boy for this type of quarterback in the era of modern offense. Alabama in the early 90s had a defense you simply didn’t score on, and they relied on the run within a conservative offense. Barker as quarterback was seen as a guy whose job was simply not to screw things up. His team bested those of higher-profile quarterbacks like Shane Matthews and Gino Torretta. Faced with a deficit against Georgia in 1994, Barker showed off his arm and outdueled Eric Zeier in a comeback win. He finally received some overdue recognition as a senior with SEC and national honors, but you probably won’t find Barker on most people’s list of the Top 5 SEC quarterbacks of the 1990s. He should be high up on such a list.

Ohio State’s Craig Krenzel is a more recent quarterback from this mold. He was the man who handed off to Maurice Clarett, and most assumed that Ohio State was much too one-dimensional to survive from week to week. But they kept winning, and Krenzel was surprisingly at the center of a lot of plays that kept the Buckeye’s record perfect. In the end, it was fitting that this unheralded quarterback was the leading rusher in the national title game and scored twice. He was only 7-21 passing, but five of those completions were for first downs. Clutch. Clarett said, “He maybe doesn’t have the best arm out there, and he’s maybe not as fast. But, I’m telling you, when it comes down to it, he can play. I’d take him over anybody in the world.” He was talking about Krenzel, but he gave a perfect description for this type of underappreciated quarterback. They’re not superstars, but they’re leaders and, when it comes down to it, winners.

I pointed to an interesting piece about recruiting by Prof. Todd Zywicki of George Mason University earlier this year during their run to the Final Four. Now he discusses an article in Sports Illustrated showing what a single trip to the Final Four can mean to a school. For example,

• Student inquiries and tour sizes have tripled.
• In March (2006) the campus bookstore sold more than $800,000 worth of George Mason clothing, compared with $625,000 worth in all of 2004-05.
• George Mason hopes to increase fund-raising for the coming year by 25%, to $25 million.
• The school projects a 2% increase in the number of applicants who say yes to an acceptance letter (and) an uptick of 10 points in the students’ average SAT score.

That’s just the beginnings of the impact of a single Final Four on the University itself. I haven’t even mentioned the effects on the athletics side – recruiting, ticket sales, donations, etc. George Mason’s established academic reputation can’t touch the exposure (estimated at $50+ million worth of PR) of a Final Four run.

At a major flagship state university, we don’t often pause to consider how much the presence of a strong athletics program means to the school. Georgia is Georgia, Alabama is Alabama, and a Southern flagship university is supposed to have a large athletics program and be a household name. A lot of private schools are also established and don’t need the publicity. Yale football was much better in 1929 than it is now, but that probably doesn’t affect the quality of their applicants much. MIT’s target student might not be picking schools based on the BCS standings.

For the right kind of university though, success on the playing field can be a big shot in the arm to the school and the community. Congrats to George Mason for recognizing that and capitalizing on it.

Randy Walker, the relatively young and innovative coach who got Northwestern football back off the mat and brought a new level of consistency and excitement to Evanston, is dead at the age of 52 from an apparent heart attack. Prayers are certainly with the Northwestern family.

In February (or three years from now, whatever amount of time you wait to evaluate recruiting classes), we can hold Mark Richt to this statement in today’s ABH. “There’s no question that’s the most critical position that we have to recruit this year, offensive lineman and in particular offensive tackles.” Coaches often talk about general recruiting priorities, but you don’t often see someone put it out there like that. This class, for all of the quality players Georgia will get at other positions, will be judged a success or failure based on the quality of its offensive line signees. The two present commitments are an outstanding start, but there are a few prospects in the state who could really make or break this class. From the fan perspective, a recruiting class often becomes distorted based on the success of the staff to win one high-profile recruiting battle. This year, that one battle might be the one for offensive tackle Chris Little.

Aside…it’s encouraging to see the news from the same Marc Weiszer piece that Sean Bailey is coming along in his rehab. Of course there’s still a big gulf from straight-ahead sprinting to SEC-quality receiving, and we’ll see over the next two months if Bailey can make those strides. He might have quite a decision to make: does he redshirt and come back for a completely healthy senior season in 2007, or does he take the risk and come back this year if he’s cleared?

With the Big 10’s announcement of their own TV network (wonder if it will be on channel 11), other conferences naturally have been asked their plans for television networks. The AJC reports that SEC-TV is “likely to become a reality”, and even Georgia has been approached about their own network. Of course the bottom line is viewership. Is there enough of an audience to support a 24/7 SEC or even UGA channel? Florida found that it could sustain such a channel, so the Sunshine network has become a nice outlet for local sports there.

As much as I would love a channel dedicated to SEC sports, a few concerns pop right to the front about this being an SEC venture.

I have a problem with the SEC or NCAA getting into the content distribution biz. This seems like a throwback to the days before Oklahoma and Georgia challenged the NCAA’s stranglehold on football broadcasts. Quasi-political organizations like the NCAA or the SEC must serve many masters, and the viewing public is way down on the list. Conference commish Mike Slive told the AJC, “One of the things that is attractive about (SEC-TV) is the potential for showing off so many of the other attributes of our institutions. Symphonies, convocations, major speeches — not just athletic events — could be shown to our fans.” Riiiiiiiiight. Sorry, Mike, SEC “fans” aren’t going to tune in for convocations. Bear Bryant’s observation that 50.000 people don’t show up to see a math exam applies here. They’d be more likely to watch the 1998 Alabama-Tennessee game.

But the conference must patronize the University presidents, and so its TV network would have plenty of token self-aggrandizing programming that is even more insipid than the endless “going pro in something other than sports” commercials. Fans will still subscribe because the one game they really do want to see makes it worth it, and they will suffer through the conference’s idea of well-rounded programming. Do us a favor, Mike. Conferences exist in their present form to serve athletics. The SEC is a powerful entity and marketable brand not because of its convocations but because of its first-class sports. It’s great the the conference has many members with outstanding academic reputations, but please don’t delude yourself that people will seek out SEC-TV for any reason other than sports programming.

In a region where conference membership is more or less homogenous, a conference network makes more sense. But in a region like the southeast, interests and rivalries are so interwoven among several conferences that a regional channel makes more sense than a conference network. For example, fans in Atlanta are probably more interested in UGA, Georgia Tech, and schools from Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, and the Carolinas. Fans in Memphis probably have different tastes and want to see teams from Mississippi, Memphis, Arkansas, Missouri, and so on. Instead of networks-by-conference, we need regional college networks. SportSouth before it got all Fox-ized was a good start, but drop the Braves and Hawks. Focus on college sports in the region. I believe, especially in the South, that demand exists to support such an idea.

I can see why the SEC might oppose a regional conference-neutral network. That network, done well, could become a virtual conference with quite a bit of clout of its own. So if we’re stuck with the idea of a conference network, ideally the SEC would lend its brand (for a nice royalty of course) to a private company that knows how to produce sports programming and then step aside. It’s how things work now among the individual sports. I’m just not looking forward to missing a good spring baseball game because SEC-TV has to show Kentucky’s graduation ceremony or missing a women’s hoops battle because the LSU wind symphony is in concert.

Georgia’s elimination from the College World Series brought the sports year to an end for Georgia’s athletics teams. Summer is a dry, dry desert for fans of college sports. But we’re only about six weeks away from football practice (doesn’t seem that long now, does it?). As you’d expect after such a good year for so many of Georgia’s teams, the high points definitely outnumber the lows.

High Points:

• SEC All-Sports Trophy.
  For the first time, Georgia unseated Florida as the SEC’s best all-around athletic department. It’s a paper award, but it speaks to the all-around strength of the University’s sports programs.
• Gym Dogs dominance.
  They didn’t lose a meet in 2006 and handled the pressures of being #1 from start to finish while defending their national title. The Gym Dogs have been good before, but they are now set up for an incredible run. If health holds up, they’re looking at a dynasty.
• SEC football title.
  Dawg fans lived without a conference title for 20 years. Now they’ve played for three titles since 2002 and won twice. D.J. Shockley and company defied the conventional wisdom that they should be down after losing Greene, Pollack, Davis, and Thurman and instead returned to the top of the SEC. Only a midseason injury to Shockley kept the 2005 season from being even better.
• Diamond Dawgs to the College World Series.
  What a ride. Up, down, and then way up. The Diamond Dawgs seemed dead in the water around mid-April, but they put it together down the SEC homestretch to earn hosting rights for the NCAA Tournament. The momentum took them all the way back to Omaha with two dramatic postseason series against Florida State and South Carolina. Three trips to the College World Series in six years clearly marks the glory days for Georgia baseball.
• Jennifer Dahlgren.
  Who? Jennifer Dahlgren. Just the Women’s Field Athlete of the Year, the best in the nation in women’s track and field. She won national titles in weight throw and hammer throw and set several SEC and NCAA records. Many didn’t notice, but women’s track at Georgia had probably their best year ever this year and finished ninth at the NCAA championships this spring.
• Rolling in the cash.
  The Dawgs are just as successful at the bank as they are on the field. It might prove to be just a temporary blip, but Georgia made headlines as the nation’s most profitable athletic department. The recent strength of the football program as well as a restructuring of the seating priority system has donations soaring while expenses have been kept sane.

Low Points:

Georgia takes the field for the Sugar Bowl

• Late-season collapse in men’s hoops.
  A respectable nonconference performance which included a nice rout of Georgia Tech had fans pretty pumped about the prospects for improvement over the dismal 2004-2005 season. Road SEC wins at Vandy and South Carolina gave the Dawgs their first taste of success away from home in years, and they were at or near .500 in the conference for some time. Entering February, talk of an NCAA Tournament bid was still very much realistic, and an NIT bid was safely in the bank. Georgia lost seven of their final eight games and even that NIT bid slipped away from them. The frontcourt collapsed often, and the guard play was far too inconsistent to carry the team. After a February 4th win at Vanderbilt, Georgia was 4-5 in the conference. Georgia dropped their next three games including an abysmal loss at home to Vandy, and Dennis Felton faced a minor backlash after getting on fans to appreciate what was going on in the program right as the season went in the tank.
• Stunning Sugar Bowl loss.
  Georgia was living large after its SEC Championship beating of LSU. The Sugar Bowl was set up to be a coronation of Shockley and team in their own backyard. With BCS teams like Penn State, Ohio State, and Notre Dame out there, the choice of West Virginia as the opponent was almost a letdown. In short, it was every bit Apollo Creed vs. Ivan Drago, lacking only James Brown descending into the Georgia Dome during pregame. West Virginia knocked Georgia to the canvas in the first quarter, and the upset win is still causing ripples into the 2006 season. West Virginia is now positioned as a favorite on the national scene this year with Louisville as their only quality opponent. Steve Slaton and Pat White are now household names, and coaches flocked to Morgantown in the offseason to bask in the offense of Rich Rodriguez. Though a ten-win season is never a low point for a football team, the way the 2005 season ended shook the Bulldog nation. It was the outcome many national observers expected from the Boise State game.
• Lady Dog injuries.
  Tasha Humphrey exploded onto the scene as a freshman, and with a pair of outstanding senior guards it was clear that only a little more frontcourt depth would place Georgia back among the nation’s elite teams. Coach Andy Landers added two big players to the post, and summer practices during 2005 saw a deep, talented team that could succeed against almost any style of play. Then the unthinkable happened. Not one, not two, not three, but four frontcourt players became unavailable for the season either through injury or attrition. The team was left with one frontcourt starter, one frontcourt reserve, a wing player thrust into the role of power forward, and zero depth behind that. After that lack of depth was exposed in the season opener against Baylor, it seemed like a promising season was all but gone. Instead, the Lady Dogs regrouped, made one of their more consistent runs ever through the SEC, competed with elite teams, finished third in the SEC, and advanced to the NCAA Sweet 16. By the time the season ended with a heartbreaking loss to Connecticut, Georgia had turned this low point into one of the better stories that Georgia athletics has seen in years.

Yes, that many Auburn fans really did get tickets.

Georgia Tech’s Bobby Dodd Stadium seats about 55,000 people. You would think that a name like Notre Dame coming to town (not to mention Miami later in the year) might cause demand for season tickets to go through the roof. Nope…remember, this is Tech. Tech will release 7,000 tickets for its opener against Notre Dame to the general public on July 1st. 7,000 tickets represents over 1/8 of this stadium. That is what remains after all season tickets, student tickets, comp tickets, and the visitor allotment have been handed out. To picture 1/8 of Sanford Stadium empty, imagine the visitor allotment for a big SEC game completely empty. Of course they will force those who buy one of these 7,000 tickets to purchase tickets to two other Tech games, ensuring sections of empty seats as people (surely most will be Notre Dame fans) eat those other tickets. Notre Dame will become the latest school to thank Tech for expanding its stadium to accomodate more visiting fans.

I’ll even pump Tech up here for a second (and then promptly shower). They haven’t missed a bowl game since 1996 (thanks to Chan’s uncanny ability to consistently achieve college football’s room temperature of 6 wins). They have played well in season openers lately against teams like BYU and Auburn. They beat Auburn and Miami last year. They have arguably one of the nation’s most exciting and gifted players at receiver. Have I mentioned that Notre Dame is coming to town? Yet tickets remain.

I shouldn’t be surprised. We’re all familiar with the three-game packages we had to buy to see Georgia and the various other marketing plans Tech has come up with for lesser opponents. Still…the words “tickets remain” and “vs. Notre Dame” should never appear in the context of college football.

Count me among those who wonder why there is such venom from (American) football fans whenever the World Cup comes around. I don’t mean indifference or even a mild distaste; I mean a full-on “get this queer sissy-boy Communist boring ‘sport’ back on the Mexican-speaking channels where it belongs.” I’ll admit that most of what I see is regional. Despite thriving youth soccer programs and top collegiate programs in the Mid-Atlantic and South, the hatred of the sport by a lot of the football fans is almost palpable. Georgia’s own Lewis Grizzard summed up the feeling of the typical Southern football fan, “If soccer was an American soft drink, it would be Diet Pepsi.”

It works the other way too. I know that during the World Cup overzealous soccer evangelists come out of the woodwork. These people are as annoying to me as they are to most. No, soccer is not about to take over the nation. No, we don’t have a duty to watch the Americans. No, people can have plenty of sophistication and education and still not get into soccer. It happens, so stop trying to convince America that it must accept soccer. I think that some of the venom directed towards soccer is brought on by these evangelists, but honestly – there’s not that many of them, and most of us just want to watch and ejnoy the World Cup in peace.

But nothing puzzles me like the sports fan who goes out of his way to tell you how much some other sport sucks. We all have sports we follow and don’t follow, but that’s not good enough. Tennis / soccer / hockey / NASCAR / women’s sports / curling is booooooooring. Its fans are stupid gay redneck snobs. You know how it goes. It’s not just football fans either. I’ve spoken with many women’s basketball fans who would love to see football go away (despite football’s role in providing most collegiate athletic opportunities for women).

I’m glad to see some other college football bloggers talking about the Cup and even being way more into it than I am. I’ve found a few more sites I’ll be reading regularly come the fall, and I’m sure that there are others I don’t even know about. It makes sense to me, because the atmosphere around even the worst World Cup game is every bit as good as what you get on an SEC football Saturday. If anyone should get the passion of the World Cup and appreciate the obnoxious and vocal crowds rivaling Baton Rouge on Saturday night, it seems like it should be college football fans.

Shandon contributed to Miami’s success in the NBA Finals and now has a championship ring. He’s put in a lot of time in the league since leaving Georgia as a star and the face of the success that Georgia had in the mid-1990s. He’s played for four teams in his NBA career and as a free agent might find himself on another roster next year. His tough defense off the bench makes him a pretty valuable reserve, and Miami’s bench was a big part of their ability to hold off Dallas. Congratulations Shandon!

Tim Dahlberg probably doesn’t make a huge salary. Few journalists do, even those who work hard and become the best at their craft. I doubt that even the impressive job title of “national sports columnist for The Associated Press” bumps his salary close to the range of those he covers in the sports world.

What does that matter? Dahlberg’s latest column tries to take down Dallas owner Mark Cuban for his behavior during the NBA finals, but he can’t seem to keep an extraordinary amount of bitterness and jealousy over Cuban’s wealth out of the piece. He obsesses over Cuban’s wallet, and it prevents him from getting very far towards his point.

Go ahead. Read the column. Count the uses of “billionaire”. Marvel over the lengths Dahlberg goes to take a shot at “the big HD televisions that must line every wall in (Cuban’s) Dallas mansion.” Can someone please give this guy a raise so the wealth envy becomes a little less overt in his supposedly AP-worthy analysis of national sports?

The funniest line is the predictable, “Shouldn’t billionaires have deeper things to worry about?” Bill Gates spends a lot of time and money fighting global health issues, and Cuban is wrapped up in his basketball team. Uh, Tim…you’re a sports writer. Your job exists because a lot of people, Cuban included, find sports and entertainment a worthy investment of money and attention. If you want to mock Cuban for considering the performance of his multi-million dollar investment a “weighty issue”, go talk to your editor about covering Gates and AIDS in the developing world.

It’s unfortunate that Dahlberg’s screed is so diluted by this envy, because he gets so close to a decent point with which I could agree. Cuban let himself become the story in the NBA Finals, and it cost his team their edge and a title. This beautiful, talented team was second-best.

I know where Cuban is coming from. He is at his core a fan, his team is playing for the ultimate prize, and fans do what fans do in these situations – they become overemotional, superstitious, and jittery. If I were scrutinized for every outburst, nervous habit, or superstition during Dawg games, I’d make Cuban look like a wine-and-cheeser. I’m generally on Cuban’s side and love that he puts it out there on his blog and really seems to get this medium. It’s just so unfortunate that it blew up as it did in the Finals.

But of course he’s not just a fan, and as the series wore on and Dallas encountered some adversity, it seemed as if the team and even the Dallas fans began to take on the personality of the team’s owner. Any sense of composure Dallas had was shot by the end of Game 5. By that point in the series, everything from the Heat to the refs to Stern to the media were in the heads of the Mavericks – everything except their focus on playing the outstanding basketball that got them to the Finals and their focus on winning the title. The bottom of this descent into self-pity and distraction came after Game 6 in the form of loser Dallas fans who stuck around just to boo Stern as he conducted the awards ceremony.

Cuban is fond of saying, “right is its own defense.” If that’s true, then wrong is its own executioner. Cuban let Stern, the league, and the refs become the enemy over the past week instead of the Heat. If right is its own defense, what does the storyline and outcome of the NBA Finals tell us?

Boise State’s trip to Athens to begin the 2005 was seen as a possible watershed moment. More than a few people were calling the game the biggest in Boise State’s history. It was a chance for the wunderkind coach to take his scheme against a vulnerable old-guard program who had just lost no small amount of talent and leadership to the NFL. Favoring Boise State in this game was the fashionable off-season upset pick entering the 2005 season. The pressure was clearly on Georgia – how would they deal with the innovative and super-productive Bronco offense, and how tight would Georgia play if they found themselves in a dogfight in their own stadium with such an upstart? If Boise won, it would be a huge step towards legitimacy among the top programs after a near miss at the end of 2004 against Louisville.

I saw things a bit differently. Because of everything that was at stake, I thought a great deal more pressure was on Boise State not so much because of the quality of the opponent but because of the importance that they had placed on that game. I asked, “what does it mean if you come up short?” As it turned out, that pressure did them in, and the collapse was personified in the complete meltdown of quarterback Jared Zabransky. It was Georgia that put on the offensive dispay as D.J. Shockley demonstrated that he could handle the reigns of his team.

All that’s history now, but what a difference a year makes for Boise State. Hear that silence? That’s the hype for Boise State in 2006. Their high-profile head coach has left for Colorado (and will make for interesting storylines when he brings that team to Athens this year). Phil Steele includes the Broncos in his 2006 preseason rankings, but so far he’s the only one to do so. You won’t find them on anyone’s list of “it” teams anymore, and the great hope for the non-BCS conferences has moved on to others like TCU.

At best, Boise State is on the periphery of the discussion this year as observers wait to see if a new coach can continue the impressive run of relative success this decade. At worst, the consecutive losses to Louisville and Georgia deeply wounded the program. A chance to recapture the magic fell just short in the bowl loss to Boston College, and while the architect of the offense remains as successor, the guru is gone. Talent at quarterback and receiver is aging rapidly, and it will be interesting to see if the new staff can keep the players coming. Success can be fleeting and elusive for even the most successful programs. It’s infinitely more fragile for the programs taking risks to build something special from nothing.

I have nothing against Boise State. I enjoy(ed) watching them play and succeed. But the people who latched onto the Broncos as a representative of something bigger than they were put Georgia squarely in the crosshairs, and I can’t deny that I took a great deal of satisfaction from watching the Dawgs respond to the challenge as they did.

Last year everyone wondered if Boise State could beat Georgia and take the next step as a program. Now I wonder just how far that loss to Georgia set the Boise State program back and if they will ever recover to reach the level of expectations and optimism they had in the summer of 2005.